


Final Scene

by Sophia_Bee



Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dark, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-01
Updated: 2014-10-01
Packaged: 2018-02-19 11:14:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2386322
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Aaron jumps off the bridge, not Lynn</p>
            </blockquote>





	Final Scene

Aaron balanced on the edge of the bridge. The wind whipped across his face, throwing dust in his eyes and he blinked and rubbed at their edges until they felt raw. He stared down into the blackness, unable to make out the water below him.

He’d never wanted to make billion dollar blockbusters. He’d never intended to be everyone’s favorite matinee idol. When he started it had been about the craft, about the ability to escape himself and become someone who didn’t go home every night to find his father collapsed in his armchair, a half empty bottle of bourbon on the wood veneer side table covered with water stains. It was about a love of words, an affair with the way they rolled off his tongue. It was about forgetting the sound of his mother crying behind the locked bathroom door as she washed the blood from the corner of her mouth.  
He was an artist.

_Come out, Aaron. Come out boy._

_Pops’ voice echoed through the darkness of the garage. Aaron cowered behind the stack of boxes that mom had never bothered to unpack after their last move. He was only a few feet from the oil stain in the floor, right below where he’d found her hanging. Aaron had always wondered what a dead person would look like. She’d shown him by climbing onto a rusted kitchen stool pops kept at his work bench and slipping her neck through the rope they used to tie up the dog who had been hit by a car last year. He wondered if her neck made a sound when it broke._

Years later there would be one of those specials on that channel that plays videos for people who have passed their twenties and settled into kids and houses with two car garages. It would give the version of his history that Aaron had authorized his agent to distribute, a cleaned-up version that never dug deep enough to show the sad boy who had memorized lines from Death of a Salesman as distraction from the thumps of his father throwing his mother against fading wallpaper of the living room wall. He watched the special one night after Logan had gone to bed and Lynn had passed out on the couch, her half-finished fifth nightcap sweating on the smoked glass table next to the pristine white leather couch that Aaron had always hated. He was in the kitchen making a late-night snack and decided to turn on the television the cook used to watch her daily soap opera. Aaron froze as he watched a picture of his father drift across the screen and the voiceover said that his mother had committed suicide when he was young and Edward Echolls had been a doting, loving father. Aaron squeezed his eyes shut, his father’s voice echoing in his head.

_Come out and take your punishment like a man._

Lynn didn’t ask why he’d thrown the television across the kitchen.

That was the first time Aaron made a plan. He had guns. He had bullets. He just needed the courage to press one of them to his temple and pull the trigger. Courage was something acting had never been able to give him.

The next day Lilly was lying on his bed, legs splayed, mouth shiny and red. She laughed at him as he fumbled with his belt buckle and he thought of porn and stuffed animals at the same time.

“Can’t you even fucking get it up?”

He grabbed Lilly’s shoulder, pulled her up and slapped the little bitch hard across the face. She laughed at him, here eyes daring him to hit her harder, telling him she could take whatever he had to give her. Then his mouth was on hers, and she was kissing him back. He fucked Lilly hard against the wall of the pool house and she smiled the whole time then sunk her teeth into his shoulder as she came. When they were done, she wiped the back of her hand across her mouth and Aaron saw a bright red smear of blood.

That was the Lilly he liked to remember. Not the one lying lifeless on the concrete pool deck, her hair a mess of brains, blood and bone. He liked to remember the taste of her strawberry lip-gloss and the way her skin felt under his fingertips. He liked to remember the way she’d whispered his name in his ear, called him ‘lover’, not the soft crunching sound as the ashtray impacted her skull.

Sometimes he dreamed of Lilly and he’d wake with his heart pounding. She’d laugh at him, whispering to him in the darkness as he lay in bed, his eyes wide open, staring into the darkness of the room.

_They’re going to find out.. You’re going to look sizzling in that electric chair, lover._

He would slip from between the covers, leaving Lynn snoring softly, go to the bathroom, turn on the hot water and scrub at his hands, still feeling the stickiness of her blood between his fingers.

Lilly laughed in his head as he stood on the bridge. Aaron Echolls wasn’t an artist. He wasn’t even a movie star. He was the pervert who fucked his son’s girlfriend. He was a killer. He hadn’t been enough to keep his mother from killing himself. He was the son who had failed his father. Did he really think he could write his own ending, the final scene of all scenes? Did he really think he’d die a tragic hero and not the pathetic murderer he really was?

The first time dad hit him he’d been seven years old. Aaron always thought beating his mother just wasn’t enough for the bastard and he decided it was time to start throwing his son against the wall as well. Aaron could still hear his laughter as Aaron cowered in the hallway, praying he wouldn’t get hit again.

_Can’t take it, boy? Be a fucking man, not her little crybaby bitch._

Aaron had thrown his hands up to protect his face as his old man’s heavy fists crashed down on him. Years later he would see that same look on Logan’s face as he pulled his belt off and twisted it in his hands, right before he cracked it across the skin of his son’s back. He should have stopped. The look only made him burn with anger and hatred, and he’d hit Logan even harder, strangely satisfied to leave his mark.

He didn’t want to be the only one with scars.

Logan was different than Aaron. Logan never cried. He just swallowed and stared back at Aaron, his eyes burning with accusations. He would sneak through the house, shoes in his hand, cower when Aaron put his arm around his neck, but he’d never beg Aaron to stop hitting him. Aaron wanted him to beg because that meant he cared enough to be scared.

Aaron took a deep breath and stared into the abyss.

“Time to fly.” He laughed, his words whipped away by the wind.

He put one foot out over the darkness, then the other. He threw his arms out as he started to plummet, his stomach rising into his throat. He smiled at the feeling of he wind whipping through his hair. He thought of Lynn, how beautiful she was the first time he met her. He thought that he would be the front page tomorrow, the story telling the sad story of his leap off the Coronado Bridge. People would read the story, shake their heads, think he had everything and he’d still killed himself. His movies would become hot sellers, snatched up by grieving fans…

Then his body hit the water, hard as cement, and everything stopped. 


End file.
